People making new words sometimes don't have a command of existing words that are not out of the ordinary, wielded by plenty of folks with just a high school diploma.
Now "post-truth", "climate emergency" and "squeezed middle" are hardly new words. The first one is just applying the highly productive prefix "post". Anyone with a decent command of English can do this. E.g. Rust programmers are envisioning a "post-C" tech landscape. "Climate emergency" is just an obvious word combination: there is an emergency and it has to do with climate. Someone in 1920 could have pointed to the new Coca-Cola bottle and remarked on its squeezed middle.
In the case of shenanigans, I don't suspect that the person who coined it didn't know of ways to express the idea.
Shenanigans is one of the words which expresses, "things are going on that don't sit well with me/someone for some reason", which is a variation on "I don't like it".
People are attracted to new words in this area, because it isn't interesting or original to make remarks about not liking something. A fresh word adds color to it.
Now "post-truth", "climate emergency" and "squeezed middle" are hardly new words. The first one is just applying the highly productive prefix "post". Anyone with a decent command of English can do this. E.g. Rust programmers are envisioning a "post-C" tech landscape. "Climate emergency" is just an obvious word combination: there is an emergency and it has to do with climate. Someone in 1920 could have pointed to the new Coca-Cola bottle and remarked on its squeezed middle.
In the case of shenanigans, I don't suspect that the person who coined it didn't know of ways to express the idea.
Shenanigans is one of the words which expresses, "things are going on that don't sit well with me/someone for some reason", which is a variation on "I don't like it".
People are attracted to new words in this area, because it isn't interesting or original to make remarks about not liking something. A fresh word adds color to it.